PM, premier to attend Sandilands’ wedding despite colourful guest list

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and NSW Premier Chris Minns will attend Saturday’s celebrity wedding of shock jock Kyle Sandilands, despite a convicted drug smuggler and a man described by his book publisher as “Australia’s most notorious underworld figure” both being in the wedding party.

Chris Minns (left) and Anthony Albanese (right) will be at Kyle Sandilands’ wedding.Credit:

Aside from his many broadcasting scandals – from a 14-year-old girl crying about a sexual ordeal on air to offending Jews, Christians and gays with inappropriate comments about concentration camps, the Virgin Mary and the monkeypox virus – Sandilands was most recently ordered to undergo “sensitivity training” for mocking Paralympians on air.

He is also well known for his intriguing social circle, which will be on full display during his wedding.

His best man is convicted drug smuggler Simon Main. Among his groomsmen is Kings Cross identity John Ibrahim.

The premier and prime minister’s offices on Thursday confirmed Minns and Albanese would attend but did not elaborate on the exact nature of their relationships with Sandilands. Nor is it clear if either leader knows Main or Ibrahim, both of whom have been photographed with Sandilands for years and regularly socialise together.

On Friday morning a spokesperson from Minns’ office confirmed he would still be attending, saying “We wish Mr Sandilands and his fiancee all the best ahead of their wedding”.

As for the Main and Ibrahim connection, the spokesperson responded: “When you go to a wedding do you know every single guest? Or do you know the bride and the groom?”

Albanese’s office said it had nothing to add on Friday, though the PM had confirmed his attendance at the wedding on air this week.

Sandilands’ manager Bruno Bouchet, also a groomsman, said Sandilands had become good friends with both politicians over recent years, but did not expand on exactly how well the controversial media identity knew them.

Last June the prime minister appeared on Sandilands’ breakfast radio show and promised he would DJ at the wedding.

Kyle Sandilands with former fiancee Imogen Anthony, and best man Simon Main, far right, at a party in Double Bay in 2017.Credit: Andrew Hornery

It remains to be seen if either he or the premier will be posing in selfies with Ibrahim or Main, who 20 years ago spent four years of an eight-year sentence in an Italian jail after being convicted of smuggling ecstasy.

Main, a former Scots College student and associate of the late disgraced stockbroker Rene Rivkin, is the stepson of entertainer Barry Crocker. He was once the boyfriend of Hollywood actor Nicollette Sheridan of Desperate Housewives fame and a “personal assistant” to singer Liza Minnelli.

In more recent years Main ran a brothel in Sydney and ferried escorts between jobs in a luxury limo with the number plate “Booty Bentley”.

Sandilands’ groomsman John Ibrahim is the author of The Last King of The Cross, a 2017 memoir his publisher Pan Macmillan describes as being written in “the mongrel tongue of the streets”.

Kyle Sandilands and John Ibrahim earlier this month.Credit: Instagram

“Bullets fly, blades flash and bodies fall. In a city of shadows, John builds his army and empire – partying like a playboy prince of darkness while staying one step ahead of the cops, the outlaw gangs and hungry triggermen, plotting to take him and his family down,” the book’s publicity material says.

Albanese and Minns, along with their respective partners, will be among 130 guests invited to the private wedding, which will also include headline-attracting guests Karl Stefanovic and wife Jasmine, Beau Ryan, Guy Sebastian and Sandilands’ long-term co-host Jackie “O” Henderson.

It is the second wedding for Sandilands, 51, who is marrying his former assistant Tegan Kynaston, 35, in a lavish ceremony and reception at the historic Darling Point mansion Swifts.

Sandilands, who earns more than $5 million a year from his television and radio gigs, has been talking about the wedding on air of late, telling listeners his wedding cake alone cost nearly $10,000, and another $150,000 had been spent on fresh flowers.